Nuggets of Gold!

YOU'LL KNOW IT'S FROM ME BECAUSE OF THE EGGNOG SPLATTERS

And to think I believed in the goodness of people.

I was just browsing Christmas cards online -- because I absolutely refuse to go anywhere near a shopping mall or store of any kind this weekend -- and found myself, perhaps inevitably, on Hallmark.com.

Did you know, for an extra fee per card ($1.25 or so), some sucker at Hallmark "will handwrite your personal closing"? Are you friggin' kidding me? I can pay someone to write "Hi Aunt Rosie, thanks again for the fruitcake, again" on a card? It seems so. I can also, according to Hallmark, "choose to have that closing handwritten in black, red or green ink." Hot damn!

I kind of feel bereft here. Now, when I get a card from someone with a handwritten message inside, I'll have to wonder whether they wrote it, or whether that monumental task was outsourced to some elf at Hallmark.

I'm also left wondering whether perhaps I chose the wrong career. Because, dang, if I can whip out, say, 60 cards an hour -- one a minute, pretty reasonable -- then that's, what, a $75-per-hour gig? Sign me up! I'll use black, red, green OR BLUE ink. And I'll correct your bad spelling for free. So there.

LIKE A 'COPS' MARATHON, BUT BETTER

One perk of my new job is I get to sit near the police scanner. To some people, this is a responsibility. An annoyance, even. To me, however, it is a form of entertainment.

Amid the dozens of calls each night for heart attacks, loud music at parties and fire alarms going off at Office Depot come some gems. Little nuggets of gold, they are. Nuggets of gold.

One last week was a call from a man (presumably no-good) who was asking for police assistance as his woman was confronting him. Sounds wussy, maybe, but you'd call 911 too if the suspect had "a knife in one hand and a hammer in the other." You go, girl.

Then there's the assorted shirtless/pantless guys showing up drunk at various places and refusing to leave. Please. Who hasn't done that?

My favorite, though, is probably the call from a rickshaw driver downtown (yeah, rickshaws in Raleigh. I know.) who got egged. Apparently a driver in a black SUV rolled down his window and threw eggs at the poor guy, thus reinforcing my long-held theory that 99 percent of people who drive black  SUVs are assholes. Awesome cousin Dani being in the awesome 1 percent, of course.  Along with anyone else I know who might a black SUV. As long as you're not an asshole.

Stay tuned for future scanner updates. I'm sure there's bound to be some amusing trouble at "The Foxy Lady" soon. There always is.